


in you, everything sank

by thimble



Series: SASO 2017 [1]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Infidelity, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-06
Updated: 2017-06-06
Packaged: 2018-11-09 20:57:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11112747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thimble/pseuds/thimble
Summary: For starters, he was Aomine-kun, an acquaintance, a smirk dropping in on their shared apartment and whisking Taiga away for a day of basketball and sun and who knows what else. For half a year, he was just Aomine, not quite a permanent fixture but something like it: an extra plate on the table, another toothbrush on the sink.Somewhere between that time and his and Taiga's anniversary, he went from Aomine, a friend, to Aomine, unattainable.





	in you, everything sank

**Author's Note:**

> written for [this](http://sportsanime.dreamwidth.org/21522.html?thread=10821138#cmt10821138) prompt.

To him, Daiki hadn't always been Daiki. For most of Tatsuya's life, he'd been nobody; they weren't anything to each other apart from, perhaps, a passerby on the sidewalk, or a stranger standing too close on the train. For a moment, he'd been a photograph on a screen, a blurry smile set against the backdrop of an outdoor court. For a beat, a mystery ("so what's his name, Taiga?"), and for a flustered pause after that, a revelation ("Aomine Daiki.")

For starters, he was Aomine-kun, an acquaintance, a smirk dropping in on their shared apartment and whisking Taiga away for a day of basketball and sun and who knows what else. For half a year, he was just Aomine, not quite a permanent fixture but something like it: an extra plate on the table, another toothbrush on the sink.

Somewhere between that time and his and Taiga's anniversary, he went from Aomine, a friend, to Aomine, unattainable.

("I think it's getting serious, Tatsu.")

If Tatsuya was worth anything at all, it would've stayed that way.

 

* * *

 

The switch was less like walking onto a highway—an instant collision—and more like a jumping out of a helicopter—a slow freefall, an endless wait for the parachute to kick in. Taiga was recruited, and with a hard kiss from Aomine and a tight embrace from Tatsuya at the airport, he was gone, and would be gone for months at a time. All of it, Tatsuya had already foreseen, had long accepted. There are some things Taiga had that were never meant for him.

He drove the two of them home, but at what was supposed to be the turn to his place, Aomine lowered the volume on the radio they had on to fill the silence, said, "keep driving," and looked back out the window. So Tatsuya did just that.

Maybe that was his first mistake.

Without much thought on either of their parts, they enter an apartment that feels a little—a lot—emptier than it had been just hours before.

"It's quiet, huh," said Aomine, taking his usual spot on the couch. Tatsuya couldn't tamp down the urge to fix it fast enough, and offered, "I'll put on a movie?"

"Great idea."

He loaded something mindless into the player, and grabbed junk food from the pantry, and took his seat on the other end. They don't bring up the space in the middle.

Sometime into that night, after they opened a few beers and found some things to laugh about, the distance between them lessened and lessened, and the apartment wasn't so quiet anymore.

They hadn't done anything wrong. Not yet.

But sometime into the nights that followed, the distance continued to dissolve until their knees knocked together, until Aomine's arm rested along the couch, above Tatsuya's shoulder.

Once, Tatsuya dared to glance at his peripheral, perhaps to catch Aomine's profile outlined in blue, and instead found Aomine staring back at him. They held each other's eyes; an explosion happened on the television and painted Aomine's face in light. Tatsuya was the first to look away.

"You have shit taste in movies," said Aomine, seemingly unbothered by what they had just shared. Tatsuya's mouth quirked, just a bit.

"I only picked that because I thought you'd like it."

"That an insult?"

"Hardly. If I were insulting you, you wouldn't have to ask."

"Asshole," conceded Aomine, laughter lines at the corners of his eyes.

"You, on the other hand," said Tatsuya, caught between ignoring and memorizing them, "have no subtlety."

Aomine let that linger in the air, and didn't bother to hide that he was staring again.

"Yeah. I guess I don't."

 

* * *

 

Taiga was transcendent as ever, eyes bright despite the exhaustion, shitty picture quality on even shittier wifi doing little to diminish the shine when he smiled.

"You guys better be getting along, or neither of you are invited to my games."

Tatsuya thought of the way Aomine would look at him, enough to set an entire forest ablaze. "Trust me, you have nothing to worry about on that front."

"I wouldn't say that," said Aomine as he sidled into view, chin resting on Tatsuya's shoulder, breath hot down his neck. "Your big brother bullies me every day."

"Only because it's so easy," quipped Tatsuya, with an ease that made Taiga's grin falter.

"I miss you guys," he blurted out, though there's no regret in his tone. Just earnest emotion.

"Miss you too," said Aomine, surprising Tatsuya and Taiga both, if the sudden widening of Taiga's eyes was any indication. Aomine was quick to ruin the mood, smirking at the screen. "Don't get used to it."

"Wasn't going to," said Taiga, scowling back, though hardly meaning it. Tatsuya wondered if he should leave them to it, but Aomine had trailed a hand down to his hip and was drumming his fingers on Tatsuya's ribs, lightly, under his shirt.

Tatsuya stayed in place.

 

* * *

 

The call dropped, and it became difficult to tell who made the first move. It could've been Aomine, lithe fingers skimming along Tatsuya's bare skin, nosing at his flushed throat; it could've been Tatsuya, eyes closed and breath harsh, turning his head so their mouths could meet.

"Long time coming," murmured Aomine against his lips. Tatsuya's hands sifted through Aomine's short hair, and settled along his jaw.

"I know."

 

* * *

 

Aomine spent his last night as Aomine in Tatsuya's mind, the name promptly banished from Tatsuya's tongue come morning.

("My dick was in your mouth, and you're still calling me that?")

("Always so crude, Daiki.")

 

* * *

 

The calendar gathered dust as the days flickered by, because Tatsuya had found himself in the habit of counting them instead through the marks he'd leave on Daiki's skin. Dates hardly mattered anymore; it simply became a case of whether or not a bruise had faded, and what he could then replace it with.

Daiki's fixations lie elsewhere. Often, he'd talk Tatsuya into one-on-ones they both know he'd win, or hover in the kitchen making a nuisance of himself as Tatsuya prepared dinner. His hands, Tatsuya realized, were exploratory not only in bed, but out of it too, wandering around Tatsuya's body as they went about mundane things.

His palm, pressed in between the warmth of Tatsuya's thighs on the couch, not always with the intent to drift further. His fingertip, tracing an invisible line from the small of Tatsuya's back to his nape until Tatsuya arched his spine and shuddered, often followed by snickering. His thumb, wiping at an excess of flour on Tatsuya's cheek that one week they decided to make pot brownies.

"Those better be as good as Taiga's," said Daiki, without a hitch in his voice. They talked about him freely, normally, befriending the elephant in the room instead of being suffocated by it.

Or they could just be overcompensating.

"You'll eat them anyway even if they aren't," said Tatsuya, arms slung around Daiki's shoulders as as Daiki's wrapped around his waist. They swayed together, right in the middle of the kitchen, as they waited for the oven and Daiki hummed his assent.

 

* * *

 

When he can, Taiga would come home to a hard kiss from Daiki and a tight hug from Tatsuya at the airport, welcomes exactly the same as his sendoffs. Tatsuya drove as Taiga told stories from the front seat and Daiki heckled him from the back.

At a stoplight, Daiki reached over and tilted Taiga's face towards him for another kiss. Tatsuya wondered if his mouth still tasted like the mint he'd stolen from Tatsuya's earlier.

He rolled his eyes, though he did smile as Taiga turned red and pushed Daiki's face away just as the light turned green. "You couldn't wait 'til we got home?"

"Why," said Daiki, with such mischief in his tone Tatsuya saw the question coming. "You want one too?"

Taiga interrupted before Tatsuya could respond, turning in his seat to swat at Daiki's head. Tatsuya couldn't have responded in time anyway.

When he thought of what he wanted, between seeing Taiga's smile and getting to press his lips to Daiki's, the first would constantly win out, but the lead was not as wide as he would've liked.

 

* * *

 

Rationally, Taiga's arrival should've been the off switch. Realistically, Tatsuya knew that the world didn't work that way.

Taiga would take it upon himself to buy whatever it was they were running out of, and once he's out the door Daiki would pin Tatsuya up against it, a knee pressed between his thighs, hands already under his shirt like they were starved of touch.

Tatsuya thought of the noises he'd heard last night, from the other side of their apartment's thin walls, thought of Daiki pressing his mouth to Taiga's just this morning.

He snuck a hand to Daiki's nape and pushed him down to his level for a kiss.

 

* * *

 

There are conversations they should have but don't, maybe because they don't need to, or maybe because they're afraid.

("You missed him. That was your only reason, wasn't it?")

("It used to be, but not anymore.")

 

* * *

 

Tatsuya liked to smoke on the balcony when he felt like being alone. Daiki knew this, and seemed to make it his life's mission to walk in on it as often as he could, emerging from Taiga's bedroom in nothing but sweatpants. Presumably, Taiga was fast asleep, but even Daiki didn't have the shamelessness nor the bravado to try anything here.

Under the moon and in front of the cityscape, Daiki was bathed in blue. It reminded Tatsuya of that first time he caught Daiki staring, and wondered if thinking of first times meant that an ending was approaching.

He passed Daiki his cigarette, and watched as Daiki brought it to his lips and sucked too hard at the filter, like he wanted to fill his lungs with nicotine and exhale it instead of talking. When he couldn't hold it in any longer, the smoke danced around him and made him appear like a mirage.

Even now, unattainable.

"I want you to be happy," said Tatsuya, purposely unclear about which 'you' he was referring to. Daiki smiled at him, handing the cigarette back.

"No promises."

 

* * *

 

To Tatsuya's surprise, it was Taiga who called it quits, over a Skype call no less. Something about the distance. Something about meeting the perfect person at the wrong time. Tatsuya was the first person he sought out right after, and Tatsuya had never seen him look so tired, without his usual shine.

"It wasn't gonna work. I didn't wanna make him wait." He rubbed at his eyes, which were swollen and red. "I did the right thing, didn't I?"

Tatsuya didn't have an answer for that. He responded with another question. "Are you happy?"

"'Course I'm not, Tatsu, but I'll be fine. Check on him for me, okay?"

"You don't have to ask."

 

* * *

 

Daiki showed up at the apartment the later that day, and his eyes were in a similar state as Taiga's. They ended up on the couch, all respect for the middle space long gone. Their clothes were askew instead of completely taken off, and most of their kisses missed their marks.

It's over faster than Tatsuya would've wanted. In the quiet of them regaining their breaths, he dropped the bomb.

"He didn't know. He can't know, do you understand? And if we—" He trailed off, and for a moment, imagined a future where that _if_ was possible, however briefly, and then, when he was brave enough, a future without Daiki in it.

He'll be fine.

It's just that, for an indeterminate period of time, it would feel like he wasn't.

He pulled himself back to the present, to the stillness in his chest and Daiki's silence. "He'll know. I can't explain how I'm sure, but he'll know."

"You're shit at letting a guy down gently," said Daiki after a while. He pressed his mouth to Tatsuya's temple as Tatsuya laughed and laughed, the soft sound of dust settling after an explosion.

 

* * *

 

And just like that, as slow as a swan dive and as abrupt as hitting the ground, Daiki was Aomine again.


End file.
